By on ( 5 Comments )

Religion and Science: A Collection of My Articles on This Theme

A great number of those who grew up under Christianity are living under a broken cross and taking on agnostic or atheistic point of view.  Unfortunately, given the Islamophobia in the West, they never pause to think, if they have the wrong version of religion, poorly collected scripture and faulty presentation of Monotheism, leading to a shabby co-relation of religion and science, given the incorrect dogma of Christianity.

Islam does not necessarily has the limitations of Christianity!

Atheists are right in exposing the irrationality of the Christian dogma.  However, the Christians are right in as far as their claim that there needs to be a Creator of this universe, Who employed natural means to do His work.  However, both parties in their self-conceit are not listening to how Islam resolves their conflict; Islam as understood by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

If the universe is the work and creation of God, then there should be no contradiction in revealed word of God, when properly understood and preserved over time, and science, which is the study of nature, or work of God.

This collection co-relates the act of God, science, with the word of God, the scriptures, the completely preserved, the Holy Quran and only partially preserved the Holy Bible. My favorite article in this collection is, The anesthesia of familiarity: There should be a Creator for this universe.
It also examines, the history of science and the roots of European renaissance; John Davenport writes in An apology for Mohammed and the Koran:

It is in the compositions of Friar Bacon, who was born in 1214, and who learned the Oriental languages, that we discover the most extensive acquaintance with the Arabian anthors. He quotes Albumazar, Thabet-Ebu-Corah, Ali Alhacer, Alkandi, Alfraganus and Arzakeb; and seems to have been as familiar with them as with the Greek and Latin classics, especially with Avicenna, whom he calls ‘the chief and prince of philosophy.’ The great Lord Bacon, it is well known, imbibed and borrowed the first principles of his famous experimental philosophy from his predecessor and namesake Roger Bacon, a fact which indisputably establishes the derivation of the Baconian philosophical system from the descendants of Ishmael and disciples of Mohammed.

In a short paragraph, John Davenport has very precisely identified all the links in the human intellectual evolution. Additionally, his book, that is available in Google books, is a master piece in the defense of the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be on him. Read his two page Preface and he is standing shoulder to shoulder with other great defenders of the Prophet Muhammad in the Western world, like Thomas Carlyle.

In ignoring the slow and multi-ethnic, cultural and religious history of science, some Western scientists and historians aim at making a god out of science and seek self-aggrandizement at the expense of the True God and human equality, they propose the European science to be some sort of magical wand and what preceded it as not good enough or label it as pre-science or mystical science etc!

Science is only a mode of study of nature; it cannot be raised to the pedestal of sublime, mystical, awe inspiring or infinite. Such stations in human imagination belong only to God the Creator.  Science cannot be a deity, it is only a mode of study.  These are the only two choices of deity that I can conceptualize, the Transcendent of God of Judaism, Unitarian Christianity and Islam or if you deny Him, sheer ‘chance’ or ‘time.’ These are the only two choices for a deity, which can capture human imagination and I hope you will agree with me after reading some of these articles that in reality there is only One possible Deity the True God of Islam, as is the creed of Islam ‘there is no God but Allah.’

Articles linked in this collection:

1.

Categories: Religion & Science

5 replies ›

  1. ‘Primal Myths: Creation Myths Around the World’ by Barbara C. Sproul
    I just ordered this book. What the Holy Quran describes is above and beyond Creation Myths!

    Reply

  2. Contrasting Genesis 1 and Genesis 2
    If we read the creation account of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 side by side in terms of details and sequence of creation, we may be inspired to move to better and more accurate accounts of the Holy Quran. The vulnerabilities of Genesis 1 are more well known. But, it is interesting to know that according to Genesis 2, plants and animals were created after mankind and women were created from man’s rib.

    Genesis 1:
    In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
    3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

    6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

    9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.

    11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

    14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

    Genesis 2:
    4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
    5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth[a] and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

    8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

    10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. 14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

    15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

    18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

    19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.

    But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

    This is from New International Version

    Reply

  3. Creation Myth page from Wikipedia
    A creation myth or creation story is a symbolic account of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it.[1][2][3] They develop in oral traditions[2] and are the most common form of myth, found throughout human culture.[4][5] In the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths, metaphorically, symbolically and sometimes even in a historical or literal sense.[4][6] They are commonly, although not always, considered cosmogonical myths—that is they describe the ordering of the cosmos from a state of chaos or amorphousness.[7] They often are considered sacred accounts and can be found in nearly all known religious traditions.[8]

    Several features are found in all creation myths. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities, human-like figures, or animals, who often speak and transform easily.[9] They are often set in a dim and nonspecific past, what historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed in illo tempore (English: at that time).[8][10] Also, all creation myths speak to deeply meaningful questions held by the society that shares them, revealing of their central worldview and the framework for the self-identity of the culture and individual in a universal context.[11]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth

    Reply
  4. Pingback: Religion and Science – Collection of Articles by Zia H Shah MD

  5. Sir David Attenborough on God

    Sir Attenborough certainly stands in awe of the majesty of nature but raises the question of suffering to deny God. Let me quote here the concluding paragraph, in the later editions of the legendary book of Sir Charles Darwin, on the Origin of Species that can make one quickly conceptualize the role of suffering in the grand scheme of things:

    From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed, by the Creator, into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

    Once the question about suffering is understood as a tool for evolution, as Charles Darwin suggested, then one is ready to fully appreciate the beauty of God’s creation as suggested by many of the verses of the Holy Quran.

    Reply

Leave a Reply